


Ouroborus

by Zagzagael



Category: Black Dagger Brotherhood - J. R. Ward
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-12 13:45:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zagzagael/pseuds/Zagzagael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vishous and Butch have to run an errand for the King.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“My lord?” Vishous pushed the slightly-ajar door to Wrath’s office fully open and took a tentative step inside. The devoted Golden at the King's feet lifted his beautiful head, eyeballed the tattooed vampire, and lowered his snout back to his paws in canine recognition.

It was unusual to be summoned alone to the office at the beginning of a night he had off from hunting lessers and V felt a bit on edge with his solitary presence.

Wrath effortlessly found the pause button on his dragon-speak tablet and pushed it aside. “V. Come in, grab a seat.”

V watched as Wrath leaned sideways, in an uncharacteristic move, pulling open a desk drawer and pulling out a bottle of single malt and two crystal glasses. He made a move to help him as Wrath began to pour and his king lifted a menacing head and V waited until Wrath re-corked the bottle, spilling not a single drop of the amber alcohol. The blind monarch lifted one of the glasses and waved at the other.

V took the offered tumbler and lowered himself into a chair. He waited, the strong smell of the aged whiskey filling his nostrils and reminding him of Butch. He closed his eyes, fully aware that the movement was private in this room.

“To Brothers in the Fade,” Wrath intoned solemnly in the Old Language and both vampires drank.

V tossed his back and swallowed the mouthful in one smooth burning motion. He grimaced with the taste of Scotch on his tongue and again caught himself thinking of the cop and his particular beverage.

Wrath set the glass back down in front of him, corraling it in his palms. “Vishous, I have - we have - a situation that requires your, ah, unique combination of attributes.”

“Let me guess. Dashing good looks and dazzling charm?”

One corner of Wrath’s lips lifted slightly. “Dangerous intelligence and deadly force.”

“That’s more like it. What do you need, m’Lord?”

“On the surface, it would seem a strange if simple thing." V watched as Wrath lifted the glass and drained it. "A skull, it belongs here.”

The trademark cocked eyebrow. "Okay. And below the surface?”

“We have a dead warrior who betrayed us before your birth, his body secreted away, desecrated, and now housed by humans who know not what they possess.”

Vishous felt his spine stiffen. “I have no knowledge of this.”

Wrath shook his head. “I know. And that's just one of the complications.”

“Alright, the history lesson can wait. What are the other complications?”

“The remains are in Los Angeles. And I don’t give a rat’s ass how many humans have to lose their lives for us to reclaim what belongs to us, but I would really rather it didn’t come to that. I don’t want to involve any _glymera_ that live in the area. I don’t want to involve anyone, actually, outside of the Brothers. We're totally on our own.”

V coughed. “I’m good, sire, but I don’t know if I’m that good.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mind?” V leaned forward and Wrath pushed the bottle towards him, setting his own massive hand over the top of his glass, indicating no more for him. V splashed a generous amount of the whiskey into his glass and settled back into the chair, holding the drink beneath his nose and breathing in deeply. “Admittedly, I know nothing other than what you’ve just shared with me. But this doesn’t really sound like a one-male job. Maybe I’m missing something? I don’t think I’m going to be able to waltz into the city of angels, lift a fanged skull from a bunch of role-playing Satanists with a nod and a handshake, stuff it into my carry on and board a Delta flight home.” He took a long pull on the drink, holding the aching liquid on his tongue, bathing his teeth in it, his fangs elongated with the taste of Butch’s preferred poison. He never drank whiskey.

“Vishous.” Wrath was shaking his head and V couldn’t tell if it was with exasperation or commiseration. “I was thinking more of driving cross-county, a covert op in LA, and back here in say, nine days or less.”

V whistled low and clear as a bell being tolled. “Yeah?”

If Wrath could see, he would see the gears beginning to turn in the tattooed vampire’s formidable brain box. V finished the drink and balanced the glass on his thigh, tapping a thoughtful rhythm out on the rim.

“I can’t do it alone.”

“Take Butch.”

V's five-chambered heart stuttered and he frowned at himself. “What?”

“No one works together as flawlessly as you two.”

“Then why isn’t he here?”

A loaded pause. “About that.”

“Sire?”

A heavy single-shoulder shrug. “This isn’t a _vacation_.”

V paused, suddenly feeling as though he had fallen into an obvious and unconcealed hole, impaled on filthy punji stakes at the bottom. It was deeply uncomfortable and he swallowed hard. “I don’t know what-“

Wrath held up a hand, the universal symbol for stop right there before you say something that makes you sound like a fuckwad. “Yeah, you do. Ever since you both got mated, something’s shifted in a not-so-great way in regards to how you two mix business and pleasure. Something just feels off. I don’t have enough Freud lingo to put my finger on it, but it’s there. You need this, I’m thinking. But it isn’t a R&R road trip, Vishous.”

V was staring at the oriental carpet beneath the King’s desk, his mind was spinning but it was his heart that was getting dizzy.

“That’s all we need to say on that score." The King breathed out heavily through both nostrils, firmly setting both palms down on his desktop. "Here’s the deets.” Wrath held up a flash drive and V stood and took it. “I want a full report before Last Meal. Let me know what you think. How it can be done and how you two are going to get it done.”

V shut the office door behind him and stood for a long time in the darkened hallway. His heart still had a touch of vertigo, but his blood was pumping hard and fast through his body. The flash drive was in his hand and it felt like a secret key in his fist.


	2. Chapter 2

“Wait, what? Like a road trip?!”

V’s brows slammed together over the bridge of his nose. He smoothed them back out with the heel of his hand. “No. Not like a road trip. Like work.”

Butch smiled crookedly, nodding. “Exactly like a road trip. The Great American Adventure. Route 66. Chasing the sun. Going west. Swimming naked in the Pacific. C’mon, big guy, a road trip.”

V couldn’t stop the grin that pulled his mouth wide, Butch’s enthusiasm was infective. He nodded with a small movement. “We don’t take road trips and this ain’t that.”

Butch was still smiling. He shrugged one shoulder. “Naw, it ain’t that, but it’s still a road trip, brother. You, me, the Escalade, a couple cases of beer and couple bottles of booze.” He squinted one eye. “I gotta load my iPod.”

“Cop, seriously.”

“Seriously.”

“I had no idea you harbored road trip fantasies.”

“All red-blooded American boys do. Just never got to take one. But now,” he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, “I do. And I’m going to enjoy it and don’t take that away from me.”

“I’m not taking anything away from you. But it is a job, O’Neil. And it could get dangerous.”

“Even better.”

V was seated at toy central, leaning back on his Steelcase Think ergonomic, the chair swiveled towards the leather conversation pit where Butch was seated, leathers still grungy, obvious exhaustion etched into the edges of his body, but the look on his face was pure energy and interest. Vishous had caught him just home, not yet showered, and hungry for Last Meal.

V studied his room-mate’s expression and marveled at how transparent the other male was to Wrath, or was he the one walking around made out of glass and Wrath had been trying to warn him. He filed that away for future thought. Right now he had to dial the cop back down and get over to his appointment with the King. He had spent the entire night with the details, working out the trip and the retrieval of the warrior’s remains. Behind him, monitors glowed with maps of the United States, pages of history in the Old Language, and a Google Earth aerial of a block in downtown Los Angeles.

“At least you sound like you’re in.” V said, his voice tinted with the slightest coloration of a question.

“Damn straight I’m in.” He paused. “How long will we be gone?”

“Minimum nine days probably safe to estimate eleven or twelve. We can only drive at night and we got no idea what exactly we’re going to find in LA.”

“Please.” Butch waved this last part away. “But that is a long time to be away from home.”

“That a problem, Romeo?”

“Not for me.” He gave V a long look. “Not for Marissa.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Vishous scowled, he felt cut by Butch's slicing gaze. “What the fuck ever. I’ve got to meet with Wrath in,” V tipped his wrist and the titanium Rolex showed its face, “twenty.”

“I’m in, V. I am in.” Butch stood and stretched, his long arms over his head, bending his torso to one side, then the other, he rocked his neck and his vertebrae popped, he tried the other side. Grunting in frustration.

“Here.” V stood and Butch turned his back towards him. Reaching with practiced long fingers, V felt his way down the thick sides of Butch’s neck, the flesh hot and pliable, he dug his thumbs in on each side of Butch’s neck bones, fingertips moving up to hold the other male’s jaw and he wrenched quickly and efficiently. “There.”

In front of him Butch sighed deeply and rolled his head forward, chin into his chest and V let his hot gaze linger on the Dhestroyer’s insanely broad shoulders, and the sweated beads wetting the short hairs at Butch’s nape. He sat down quickly.

“Your hands, my man, are heaven on earth.” Butch walked towards the door. “Thanks.” He stopped and looked back. “Any idea when we leave?”

“I’m thinking soon. I’ll let you know after I brief Wrath.”

Butch looked at him across the dim room then began to laugh. “A fucken vampire road trip. Whodathunk it. See you at Meal, V.”

Vishous closed his eyes and listened as Butch made his way down the hall and into his room. He rocked himself back and forth in the chair on the balls of his socked feet. He brought his hands together, and slowly lowered his forehead to his tented fingers. What had Wrath meant when he warned him it wasn’t a road trip and why was Butch insisting it was? He knew Butch better than anyone, knew this for the fact it simply was, and yet he hadn’t known of this desire. His thoughts felt muddy and dirty and messy. He couldn’t see through. Suddenly he wondered if he relied too much on visions and foresight and was blind to seeing things as they really were in the here and now.

He turned back to the bank of computers, the monitors mapping the trip, and pushed all the debris and detritus of his soiled life out of his mind and went back to work on the job he had been given.


	3. Chapter 3

Her drawn-out silence was statement enough, but finally, she muttered, “Really? A vacation?”

V wondered how many more out-of-left field punches to the cerebral cortex he was going to be able to take. It had been a strange 16 hours. “Jane.”

She held up a hand. “No, I know. It’s work, work, work.”

“But?“ V bit down on his frustration.

“It just sounds like a vacation, you know. You, Butch, the Escalade. Driving across America. Go West, young man. All that.”

“What is it with you humans and following the freakin’ sun?”

She looked at him, confused.

“Never mind. Come here. Come here, leelan.”

She moved into his embrace and he felt as though he were holding an ice mummy. Slowly he dropped his arms and she stepped back, her head lowered.

“You want I should tell Wrath to find another brother?”

She nodded still not looking at him. He reached out and gently tipped her face upwards. “Can you?” she whispered.

Unreasonable rage bloomed behind his sternum and he pressed his fist into his chest.

“Vishous?”

“No, Jane, actually I can’t. This is my job, my king has requested this from me. I don’t honestly think anyone else can do it.” He closed his eyes to keep from seeing the obvious pain on her face. “What’s wrong? Tell me the truth.”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was shredded and she moved away from him, dissolving into air and then reappearing like dirty smoke. She moved around their room in a darting ghostly approximation of nervous pacing. “Something is definitely wrong. I’m not denying that. At all. And I’m trying to not put it on you. I don’t think it’s you. I think it’s me.”

V felt as though he were being drenched in freezing water. “Hey, we’ve had a tough year, I know that. You know that. It’s going to get better. Gaurandamnteed.”

Finally she stopped, still distant from him, but holding still, her arms crossed tightly across the front of her body. “I don’t think so.”

He took a long step towards her and she shook her head, he realized if she had been an animal she would have bared her teeth at him. The action stopped his feet like lead.

“I don’t belong here. I don’t fit in. Not really. I’m not making,” she laughed and the sound was bitter, “friends. You and I have been tearing each other to pieces. Okay, not now, right now things are better.” Her body shimmered but she stayed corporeal. “Humans talk about the honeymoon year. We haven’t had that. We’re diminishing one another instead of, I don’t know….we’re standing in one another’s way, we’re holding each other in this stagnant place, not letting each other move, become. If our first year together has been this terrible kind of thing well…what does that mean for the future, for,” she paused and it was a terrible silence, “for eternity?”

“Jane.”

“And my work-“ her voice trailed off.

“Your work is important. You’re good. You’re needed. You do belong.”

“My work is adequate. I will never, V, never know as much as Havers. I can’t. There will forever be a disconnect, a distance, between who I am and who all of you are. Even more so now.”

He wanted to take her in his arms, fold her against him, brush all the pain and fear off her and make her warm again. But he was frozen.

"I’m tired, Vishous. I’m tired in a way that even I recognize for what it is. I don’t want to explain it to myself and I can’t explain it to you.”

A slow motion glacier was pulverizing him. He sat heavily on the bed.

“I want to go away, too. Take me with you.”

Suddenly and inexplicably, V was hit with a fight or flight response. He physically had to restrain himself from standing, walking past his shellan, moving out the door, and into the new day. The rising sun offering him a kind of respite he had never ever considered before. If exhaustion was contagious, he had gotten infected. At the same time he had to uncurl both hands from lethal fists to keep from tearing through the room, destroying every single thing in his path. He breathed in, holding the air in his body, jettisoning his mind into deep dark warm waters.

He stood slowly, the turmoil and danger passing storm-like out of his body. “I’m not going. Nothing is worth this. I’ll tell Wrath it’s off, I can’t do it.”

She was in his arms, mouth fast on his, catching him off-guard and he allowed himself to fall backwards on the bed. She had become like a wild animal and he permitted her to maul his body, but he let his mind step out and tried to rationalize what had become an insane scene. He stepped back in.

“Slow up, slow up. The only way this is going to work is if you get a couple zip ties out of my leathers and restrain my wrists.”

She grinned wickedly at him and moments later she had tied each of his wrists to the bed posts. It was a flimsy work-around at best, but he needed it. He closed his eyes and nodded.

Later, he twisted his hands free, snapping the plastic restraints as though they were thread, and he turned onto his side, away from her body, his back to her. She was asleep and he lay awake for hours knowing that there had been a test, an exam, but there was no passing or failing, it was a testing of boundaries and limits. They had been playing hot potato with a live grenade free-falling out of Boeing 747 over a volcano.

When the shutters rose, he rolled over onto his back. She was standing near her dresser, threading earrings into the lobes of her ears. She looked over at the motion and her expression was unreadable to him.

“I’m over it, V. Go. Do your job. It’s okay.”

And after she kissed him and left he knew there was no pass or fail, but he had certainly lost. He replayed the moves of the psychological game they had played while he showered and dressed and with a terrible sinking realization he recognized that she had had no idea, there was no conscious manipulation, they had both been reduced to reacting. Their relationship had become a parody of Newton’s Third Law Of Motion: _... in every interaction, there is a pair of forces acting on the two interacting objects. The size of the force on the first object equals the size of the force on the second object. The direction of the force on the first object is opposite to the direction of the force on the second object. Forces always come in pairs - equal and opposite action-reaction force pairs._

With a strange exhilaration, he found himself looking into the mirror in the bathroom, nodding to himself. He couldn’t wait to get the hell on the road.


	4. Chapter 4

2,893 miles - the freeway a virtual milky way on earth promising vast open space for their own private meteor. They were headed west. Definitely not into the setting sun but trying to stay ahead of the rising sun at their backs. 45 hours in total to make it to the far edge of the continent where Butch was maintaining that he would be leaping butt ass naked into the warm ocean. They had 14 hours available to them a night. But the mathematical challenge of driving a minimum of 12 hours plus locating a vamp-friendly crashing spot equaled an added night to the estimated drive time. 600 to 700 brutal miles at one go.

But for some reason the actual task of being locked into the cabin of the Escalade with the cop, driving away from Caldwell, driving into the unknown, the inherent exhaustion of the job was all washing over V like a warm, cleansing river. He felt rejuvenated. And after the past two nights with a sulking, moody Jane he was okay with feeling relieved. He recognized the cut to his heart, felt the weight on his solar plexus signaling domestic unease, but he had come to a black-and-white place where he had given himself permission to do the job at hand and confront the situation at home when he got home. Right now he was on the road with the male he trusted most in the world and he wasn’t going to let something he had no control over darken his mood. If he had to bury all thoughts of his unhappy mating, he was willing to do it. He had buried much more than that in his long life.

Chicago was the first planned stop. The two of them had left immediately following a briefing of the Brotherhood in Wrath’s office. V had brought the group up to date and not one of them had equated the dangerous mission with a holiday. Butch had his game face on but Vishous kept getting mental sparks from his partner and that electricity was fueling his own desire to get on the road.

And now they were halfway to the Windy City, expectant silence between them becoming casual comfort.

“Too West Coast” was blasting out of the Escalade’s upgraded sound system. Butch had his seat three quarters reclined, socked feet up on the dash, and had just popped the cap on a cold bottle of dark beer. He was sipping contentedly and whistling under his breath.

“You do realize you’re breaking about 16 different kinds of laws, true?” Vishous said without letting his eyes leave the darkened freeway of Pennsylvania, impeccably groomed farmland flashing past as he floored it across the state.

Butch turned and high-voltaged him with a smile so toothy and full of mischief that V couldn’t help but catch it in his peripheral. “Yeah?” he asked and finished the bottle in one long, loud swallow. “When did you become Mr. Law and Order?”

“When did you start courting traffic violations and misdemeanors?”

“I just don’t sweat the small stuff anymore.”

V grinned. “What do they say, _and it’s all small stuff_?”

“Damn. Wish that was true.”

“What’s weighing heavily on you, cop?”

“You joking?” Butch turned and slotted the empty bottle into a paper bag open on the floor behind his seat. He fished another beer out of the cooler, his shoulder rubbing hard against V’s elbow.

V glanced over at the cop, watching as he popped the cap and sucked back more beer. “You going to slow down or am I going to be stuck listening to drunken rambles all the way to Chi-town?”

“Thinking I might speed up, actually.”

“A cheap and sloppy date.”

Butch laughed and the sound reverberated inside V’s chest cavity, lightening the dark space and weight there. “I think I needed this road trip,” he admitted.

“Whoa. Thought it was no-how no-way a road trip?” Butch laughed again and elbowed V.

“Road trip sounds better than running the hell away.”

Butch grew very serious very quickly. “You wanta talk about that?”

“Nope.”

A long drawn-out silence while the rap song ended and Beyonce’s smokey growl of “Upgrade U” filled the Escalade, the tempo electrifying the dark interior.

 _“It’s very seldom that you’re blessed to find your equal.”_ One single lyric from a simple throwaway hip hop song hit V with the force of a sledgehammer to the temple. He reached out and knuckled the off button on the stereo.

“Not feeling the R&B, big guy?” Butch’s voice was insinuating.

V nodded. “Not feeling that tune. Way too touchy feely, if ya feel me?” He smiled, gaze cast sideways. “Didn’t think that was your style.”

“Touchy feely? Could be my style, could be. You think you know my style?” Butch sipped at his beer.

“I don’t know shit from shinola.”

“Whoa. Alright then. You need me to drive so you can chill a bit?”

V realized he was putting his own head trip on display. “Naw, I’m cool.”

“Tell me about our stops. You found safe havens here and back?”

“Yeah. And that part was harder than finding the location of the remains. Not a lot of vamps on the network outside of New England. It’s glymera, of course, so you better be on your best.”

“I clean up real good, V.”

“Yeah, you’re the poster boy for squeaky. I’m not expecting to sit around and sip tea with our pinky fingers jutting out making small talk. I want to go to ground, get unconscious and be back on the road the minute the sun sets. True? But you never know with these types, what they expect or demand.”

“Demand? Really?”

“Sounds extreme, huh? But if someone wants us at Last Meal, we need to be ready to accommodate. Set an example, if we can. There’s a truckload of distrust out there where the Brothers are concerned. We don’t need to quantify that for these vamps.”

“That why you brought me instead of Zadist?” Butch laughed and V smiled.

“Funny. I didn’t bring you in, cop. Wrath had us tag-teamed from the beginning. Says we work well together.”

“Never had that on either a report card or a performance review.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.” V said, his voice light and then added in a more serious tone, “But yeah, Z’s straight and narrow now. I think the brother is totally presentable.”

“I agree. Completely. Bella’s the best thing that ever happened to that male.”

“By a long shot. Guess that’s the point of being mated. To your destined.”

Butch turned in the seat, V caught the fake performance wherein he watched the big male stretch and push his back against the door, deliberately facing him now. “Yep,” he said slowly.

“What?”

“Not a conversation for me to start, my brother. But I am here.”

“Fuck that noise.” V turned a slow long look at Butch, eyes flicking to the peripheral freeway ribboning out in front of them. He took both hands off the wheel and motioned with them palm up. “Butch.” Even Vishous could hear the pleading in his own voice. He scowled.

“I got it. Zip it. Put your hands back on the wheel and keep your eyes on the road.” V did as he was told and beside him Butch straightened in the seat and reached down into the dark for his shitkickers. “Pull over next chance you get. Gotta see a man about a horse.”


End file.
